A ‘Thirst for the Divine’ A ‘Thirst for the Divine’
Charles Wright and Charles Simic count among the best poets of their generation. Each career has unfolded with considerable excitement for serious readers of contemporary poetry, ...
May 2, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Jay Parini
Discovery/The Nation ’02 Prizewinners Discovery/The Nation ’02 Prizewinners
The Nation announces the winners of Discovery/ The Nation, the Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. Now in its twenty-eighth year, it is an annual contest for poets whose work ha...
Apr 25, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Various Poets
The Enemy The Enemy
The buildings' wounds are what I can't forget; though nothing could absorb my sense of loss, I stared into their blackness, what was not supposed to be there, billowing of soot...
Apr 18, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Rafael Campo
Stationary Stationary
Perhaps time is our invention To make things seem to move Like the uncovering tail of the blue jay As it lights its feet on the wet Trembling wood. Perhaps the seasons are really n…
Apr 11, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Laura Manuelidis
Song of the Sunshine State Song of the Sunshine State
Campbell McGrath's entertaining and frustrating fifth book of poems--every single one of them devoted to some aspect of Florida--raises two large questions. One has to do with rep...
Mar 28, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Burt
Sonnet: Against Making Blood Speak Out Sonnet: Against Making Blood Speak Out
If I die one day from the bullet of a young killer-- a Palestinian who crosses the northern border-- or from the blast of a hand grenade he throws, or in a bomb explosion while I'...
Mar 28, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Meir Wieseltier
The Marvel of the Obvious The Marvel of the Obvious
"There are things/We live among 'and to see them/Is to know ourselves.'" These three lines are among the most stirring written by George Oppen, a poet whose modesty and honesty p...
Mar 7, 2002 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella
Messenger Messenger
The birds stopped coming after the annuals died. I didn't realize how much I missed them until the bluebird Returned, lured by the burgundy haze of the fall pansies Pour...
Feb 28, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Franklin
Not Betsy Rosses Not Betsy Rosses
For a while I thought about designing a flag. Something bigger, blurrier than "nation." I imagined a hovering planet on a field of blue, and "United We Stand" could be written un...
Feb 21, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Eileen Myles
Lost in America Lost in America
"When I write, I bid farewell to myself," Jimmy Santiago Baca said in 1992. "I leave most of what I know behind and wander through the landscape of language." This is a memorable...
Feb 14, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ilan Stavans